Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Los Angeles Police Department in media

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} ^Sports! 01:47, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Los Angeles Police Department in media

Delete - laundry list catch-all article seeking to capture anything in which the LAPD appears, regardless of the importance of the LAPD to the fiction from which it's drawn. Tells us nothing about the LAPD, nothing about the fiction it's from, nothing about the real world. Otto4711 15:15, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per User:Otto4711. --Hornet35 15:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, but improve per User:Fresheneesz/Don't Destroy and Wikipedia:What Isn't Grounds for Article Deletion in order to address Otto4711's concerns by adding references and more regular text. Sincerely, --Le Grand Roi des Citrouilles^Tally-ho! 16:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It took me awhile to read WP:LIST and understand what it means when one refers to a list of "indiscriminate information", but this is the classic example... a list of things with little or no explanation as to why they're there, beyond what the title of the article implies. Improve, or delete Mandsford 17:10, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Clean-up to be like the List of films featuring the United States Marine Corps article. Which probably needs some further work on it, especially the lead section. FrozenPurpleCube 18:28, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Wikipedia isn't a "catch-all" clutter/trivia guide. RobJ1981 23:36, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Little more than an indiscriminate trivia list, from a book about the Manson Family murders to an episode of Punk'd. Crazysuit 02:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into main article. I pared the insanely long list way down into prose that flows a lot better. It now contains what I think are the most relevant mass-media representations (except for the non-fiction books; I really don't know about those).--Chaser - T 02:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and improve, as suggested above. The LAPD is used in media as an iconic police department, and the collection of this information is encyclopedic. DGG (talk) 06:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You can of course cite reliable sources that novelists, filmmakers, television people consider the LAPD "iconic" in any way? Or could it possibly be that since many films and TV series are set in Los Angeles that we just see the LAPD more often because it's convenient? Otto4711 15:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

following your logic, would you agree that articles on the use of other police departmens are encyclopedia-worthy? DGG (talk) 00:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that articles that are actually about the topic of the use of XYZ police force in such and such medium that are backed by reliable sources and are not simply collections of "in the movie Attack of the Blug a Fumblebuck PD police officer got eaten by the blug" are encyclopedia-worthy. Lists of cop-spotting references are not. This article is a cop-spotting list. Otto4711 19:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Total trivia, not a notable subject. Dannycali 22:14, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- We generally determine notability by ~~references~~ sources, of which there are now two in the article and many that DGG listed below.--Chaser - T 04:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)20:49, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
References I think Otto asked for references that this was not just a matter of convenience: a quick look finds from Gooogle Scholar
Staging Murders: The Social Imaginary, Film, and the City NM Klein - Wide Angle, 1998 - muse.jhu.edu ... 1997. Since the Rodney King incident in 1991, the LAPD has been routinely portrayed on film as a pack of psychotic buffoons. In ..
[BOOK] Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth-century America CP Wilson - 2000 - books.google.com ... Gid Powers,Joe Domanick, and Claire Bond Potter have demonstrated so well, by FBI and LAPD sponsorship of the “G-man” style of policing in film, on radio ...
Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in" Boyz N the Hood" and" Menace II Society" PJ Massood - Cinema Journal, 1996 - JSTOR ... Again, these are most literally signified by the presence of the LAPD. While there is an absence of surveillance helicopters in this film, the police still are ...
Drug Wars: The Political Economy of Narcotics D Wars - The Journal of Popular Culture, 2005 - Blackwell Synergy ... in 1930s Los Angeles, where control of Mexican labor, imagery, and drug use was a key factor in the Hollywood film industry and the empowerment of the LAPD. ..
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan …T Hamm - Journal of the Southwest, 2001 - questia.com ... critiques of the corrupted city put forth in hardboiled fiction and film noir from ...describes LA, in the process spotlighting the role of the LAPD in brutally ...

This is a quick list from only the first 20% of the GS hits, , to demonstrate that sources do exist, not yet a contribution to the article, for which of course the articles need to be read and evaluated more carefully, but it certainly indicates that multiple academic sources consider the role of the LAPD in film to be significant in ways other than just co-location in Los Angeles. and so on,

Assuming that the people proposing deletion of the article would rather improve it, this shows that it could be done. I wouldn't like to say that they want to delete it regardless of the importance of the topic and the presence of sources. DGG (talk) 02:20, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to write an article using those sources that is actually about the subject of the protrayal of the LAPD in the media. As the current article is shite, its deletion will provide you with a clean slate. Otto4711 19:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've now written an article using sources that is actually about the portrayal of the LAPD in the media. There are only two media portrayals discussed, but just because an article is short is not grounds for deletion.--Chaser - T 03:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as an unnecessary fork. All relevant info can be placed in the LAPD article.--Jersey Devil 03:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Such "delete and merge" options are discouraged by the GFDL, which encourages preservation of attribution history.--Chaser - T 04:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.